ARABIAN NIGHTS FOR TURGIS 369

there?" he asked, trying to appear light and easy.

''Which one? What are you talking about?"

"Well, you keep smiling at him—I mean, that one
there, the chap who's just had a permanent wave, by
the look of him/'

"Oh, the one who keeps looking round. He seems to
think he knows me, doesn't he? He's rather attractive,
as a matter of fact."

"Well, I suppose as long as you think so, it's all right,
isn't it?" said Turgis bitterly. He could feel a pain, a
real pain, as bad as toothache, somewhere inside him.
"He doesn't attract me/' he mumbled. "If you ask me,
he looks a rotten twister—bit of a crook or something/'
But in his heart he knew that the chap was taller and
stronger and better-looking and better-dressed and
altogether more important than he was, and he could
have killed him for it.

"He doesn't at all," said Lena. Then she laughed and
made a face at him. "You're jealous, that's all And you
oughtn't to be jealous, it isn't nice, I'll smile at him
again now. I think he's lovely."

When she said that and looked so determinedly in that
fellow's direction, Turgis was filled with a desire to take
hold of her there and then, dig his nails into her soft
flesh, and hurt her until she screamed. He was suddenly
shaken with the force of this desire, which was like
nothing he had known before. But at that moment this
little game of glancing and smiling came to an end, and
the person who put a stop to it was the girl with the other
man. She turned round, too—and good luck to her,
thought Turgis—then frowned and said something to
her companion, and after that there was no more turn-
ing round and Lena divided her attention between the